March 20, 2004
Killer App: National Gallery
So, I was playing around with the National Gallery web site, after reading Ben Hammersley talking about birds and air pumps. It turns out the pictures on the site all have a "Send to Mobile" feature - whereby your chosen artwork gets sent by MMS to your phone! This is a killer application of joined-up Web and MMS.
Taking a look at the terms and conditions, it seems like a reasonable amount of "fair use" is built in. So I now have a masterpiece as my phone background.
The whole site is very nicely put together and easy to get into. There are several ways of finding artworks - beginner's guides, a keyword search, by century, and a very usable drill-down full index (not unlike the Mac finder in "Columns" mode). You can view the image at a decent size, or use a nifty java applet to view details. Outstanding!
Finally, a word of warning before you go sending hundreds of pictures to yourself: it only works in the UK, and there is a charge: Orange (£0.10), O2 (£0.13), Vodafone (£0.25) and T-Mobile (£0.25). (From the look of those charges, I think I may move to Orange for my next contract.)
Currently listening to Porcelain from the album Play by Moby
Posted by savs at March 20, 2004 7:01 PM